Trump: Now More Off the Deep End of the Rational Pier With "QAnon" Conspiracy Theories

Trump's Latest Band of Followers Picking up Steam

(QAnon Conspiracy Nuts)

VP Pence Meets SWAT Team Members in Florida

(One member wearing Q patch was later fired)

“Paranoia runs deep, into your life it will creep” lyrics from the VN-era Buffalo Springfield song, or as Yogi Berra once quipped: “It's like Deja vu all over again.”

The top photo of Trump supporter at rally holding up a “QAnon” prop sign.

The other photo above is that of a SWAT officer in FL who was demoted (UK the Daily Mail) after he was seen wearing a patch dedicated to the “QAnon” conspiracy theory in the photo above with VP Mike Pence. Broward County Sheriff's Sergeant Matt Patten wore a patch reading “Q - Question the Narrative” during a meet and greet with Pence, who in turn shared the photo on his official Twitter account.

However, that Pence account quickly removed the photo and replaced it with another that did not show Sgt. Patten in the picture, but that only fueled the certainty of devotees of the “QAnon conspiracy” theorists.

Main Story re: QAnon (Washington Post):  The “Q letter indicates a person holding a DOE top secret SCI security clearance and Anon refers to an Anonymous person. 

Their believers tend to support other conspiracy theories about government, experts said, and now Trump has tacitly breathed life into their ideas. The central theme around QAnon fits his argument that he’s an outsider being dragged down by (mostly Democratic) lawmakers who feel threatened by him and the change he brings to governing. 

The Q belief: There is a “secret plot by an alleged deep state” against Trump to get him out of office. That theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous image board 4chan by someone using the name Q – presumably an American, but probably later a group of people – all claiming to have access to highly-classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the U.S.

Q has falsely accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democrats in elected office, and high-ranking officials: (1) all engaging in an international child sex trafficking ring, and (2) that Trump feigned collusion with Russians in order to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.

Trump hasn’t endorsed QAnon, but he is aware they align with his base, and he has retweeted QAnon. 

There has been a growth of “Q” signs at his rallies. 

Trump embraces QAnon conspiracies while making up his own. His first big one was declaring that Barack Obama wasn’t U.S. born (was from Kenya) and thus not qualified to be president.

In just the past few weeks, Trump has pushed conspiracy theories about (1) the death of a congressional staffer of a now-prominent MSNBC host (Joe Scarborough, and (2) that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester Martin Gugino knocked unconscious and bleeding by police was actually Antifa (Anti-fascist) and it was a setup (his tweets). 

(I posted more on that Buffalo story here).

All of those dynamics have encouraged QAnon supporters to step into the mainstream, with many now running for Congress (some 50 or across the country) – related – a Trump congrats to a GOP “Q primary winner” in GA.

Joseph Uscinski at the University of Miami wrote a book about why people believe in conspiracies saying: “These people feel emboldened. They feel like their issues are getting addressed — and that is they hate the establishment and want to blow it up. Trump built this coalition with these folks, and they feel like they’re a part of it and this is their time.”

Background on Finding a Good Conspiracy or Starting One:

First, there has to be something a conspiracy theorist can use, something that doesn't make sense, and usually about a real event. In some conspiracies, it's something very small. But in the case of 9/11, it has been the biggest since.

Four things that do not make much sense in the official story, according to conspiracy nuts are.

1.    The three skyscrapers collapsed. Never has a skyscraper ever collapsed because of fire. When the North and South Towers collapsed, that might have seemed believable because of the giant airplanes that crashed into them. But when WTC 7 collapsed, that was completely unprecedented.

2.    The way the President and his handlers acted when the second plane crashed into the South Tower. The reaction was strange. When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, it might be possible to excuse the behavior of the President's team because maybe nobody really knew what happened. However, by the time the second jet hit, everyone knew what was happening, so the fact that the President and his handlers did not respond immediately is certainly odd.  

3.    The Pentagon could be hit by a big, lumbering passenger jet. On the face of it, that seems completely impossible. The Pentagon, after all, is the nerve center for the largest and most sophisticated military organization that the world. So it is reasonable to assume that there would be a defensive system in place, making the building invulnerable. Surely buildings like the Pentagon would be protected by surface-to-air missiles, wouldn't they?

4.    The attack on the Pentagon happened 58 minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower, which was plenty of time to scramble jets and protect Washington, D.C. even if there were no missiles on the ground.  

  

Plus, not one of the four hijacked planes was shot down by fighters, even though fighter interception is fairly standard. Case in point: When Payne Steward's Lear jet went off course in 1999, more than 10 jets fighters intercepted it over the course of its flight within 20 minutes of flight controllers noticing a problem. So why was there an apparent lack of response to the four 9/11 four hijacked planes? 

These are not subtle – these are big things to the conspiracy nut – and are things that anyone should see and they will make sure they do. A conspiracy theorist (especially one who happens to have an axe to grind, or just completely loony) might notice dozens of other anomalies.

What happens is that the conspiracy theorist notices: “One or more smaller things that do not make sense from the official version of a story, and that gets their attention – then in turn build in that to spread their version of even a bigger conspiracy of the same story and hope is catches on and spreads even more.”

One accurate conclusion from Dr. Joanne Miller, Associate Professor and who teaches and studies the political psychology of conspiracy theories at the University of Delaware says: “We now have a president who uses conspiracy rhetoric arguably more than any other president in modern history.”

My 2 cents: All this very troublesome – conspiracy nuts will always be and among us, but now with Trump in the White House and the level he brings and maintains – wow that is most troublesome.

All of that is unheard of and hopefully will never again show its ugly head in our history. Trump with his over 19,000 lies and now more of this just plainly makes us look awful as a nation around the globe since he supposedly represents the country and all of us. 

Thanks for stopping by.